Writing Less

I don’t really know what prompted my retreat from the sphere of public publishing. Some of it seemed to stem from how ephemeral the exercise was. Write a few words, share it on Facebook, get a few likes, maybe some comments, maybe none at all. Then something else comes along. Something shinier, more brazen, deflects your attention and it almost seems like the words you had just typed were already inconsequential the moment they ended up onscreen.

And yet, there was also a sense of freedom, that I didn’t have to log every little nuance down. I became, and am now more interested in living than in archiving. Something’s changed in me these past six months, and I feel more present than ever. I’m leading a quieter life, but strangely I don’t miss the old life. I do get scared that I’m not meeting my friends as much, or growing my network as much, but I figure those things will come in due time.

I’m happy, I’m sad, but I’m confident that I’m allowed to live life on my own terms versus the expectation of what people expect from the projected personalities on the Internet.

Perhaps I was looking for that thread of innocence amidst the clump of threads that I had complicated my life with all those years ago. Who am I? Do I matter? And sometimes the answer is “no” as much as it is “yes”. But the beautiful thing is that regardless of the answer at whatever point the answer chooses to manifest itself as, I know that I am both, and I come to this altar of publishing, and offer my sacrifice of words, that the God or gods would take them, and have their way with them. I will be judged, condemned and redeemed all at once. I will live and die all at once.